Learnable speed control for speech synthesis

ABSTRACT

A method, computer program, and computer system is provided for synthesizing speech at one or more speeds. A context associated with one or more phonemes corresponding to a speaking voice is encoded, and the one or more phonemes are aligned to one or more target acoustic frames based on the encoded context. One or more mel-spectrogram features are recursively generated from the aligned phonemes and target acoustic frames, and a voice sample corresponding to the speaking voice is synthesized using the generated mel-spectrogram features.

BACKGROUND

This disclosure relates generally to field of computing, and more particularly to data processing.

Speech synthesis methods rely on a phone duration prediction model for controlling the duration of each phoneme during speech generation. In such systems, the speed of generated speech is normally controlled by multiplying the predicted duration with a controlling factor to make it either faster or slower.

SUMMARY

Embodiments relate to a method, system, and computer readable medium for synthesizing speech at one or more speeds. According to one aspect, a method for synthesizing speech at one or more speeds is provided. The method may include encoding, by a computer, a context associated with one or more phonemes corresponding to a speaking voice. The one or more phonemes may be aligned to one or more target acoustic frames based on the encoded context. One or more mel-spectrogram features may be recursively generated from the aligned phonemes and the target acoustic frames, and a voice sample may be synthesized at a given speed corresponding to the speaking voice using the generated mel-spectrogram features.

According to another aspect, a computer system for synthesizing speech at one or more speeds is provided. The computer system may include one or more processors, one or more computer-readable memories, one or more computer-readable tangible storage devices, and program instructions stored on at least one of the one or more storage devices for execution by at least one of the one or more processors via at least one of the one or more memories, whereby the computer system is capable of performing a method. The method may include encoding, by a computer, a context associated with one or more phonemes corresponding to a speaking voice. The one or more phonemes may be aligned to one or more target acoustic frames based on the encoded context. One or more mel-spectrogram features may be recursively generated from the aligned phonemes and the target acoustic frames, and a voice sample may be synthesized at a given speed corresponding to the speaking voice using the generated mel-spectrogram features.

According to yet another aspect, a computer readable medium for synthesizing speech at one or more speeds is provided. The computer readable medium may include one or more computer-readable storage devices and program instructions stored on at least one of the one or more tangible storage devices, the program instructions executable by a processor. The program instructions are executable by a processor for performing a method that may accordingly include encoding, by a computer, a context associated with one or more phonemes corresponding to a speaking voice. The one or more phonemes may be aligned to one or more target acoustic frames based on the encoded context. One or more mel-spectrogram features may be recursively generated from the aligned phonemes and the target acoustic frames, and a voice sample may be synthesized at a given speed corresponding to the speaking voice using the generated mel-spectrogram features.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

These and other objects, features and advantages will become apparent from the following detailed description of illustrative embodiments, which is to be read in connection with the accompanying drawings. The various features of the drawings are not to scale as the illustrations are for clarity in facilitating the understanding of one skilled in the art in conjunction with the detailed description. In the drawings:

FIG. 1 illustrates a networked computer environment according to at least one embodiment;

FIG. 2 is a block diagram of a program that synthesizes speech at one or more speeds, according to at least one embodiment;

FIG. 3 is an operational flowchart illustrating the steps carried out by a program that synthesizes speech at one or more speeds, according to at least one embodiment;

FIG. 4 is a block diagram of internal and external components of computers and servers depicted in FIG. 1 according to at least one embodiment;

FIG. 5 is a block diagram of an illustrative cloud computing environment including the computer system depicted in FIG. 1, according to at least one embodiment; and

FIG. 6 is a block diagram of functional layers of the illustrative cloud computing environment of FIG. 5, according to at least one embodiment.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

Detailed embodiments of the claimed structures and methods are disclosed herein; however, it can be understood that the disclosed embodiments are merely illustrative of the claimed structures and methods that may be embodied in various forms. Those structures and methods may, however, be embodied in many different forms and should not be construed as limited to the exemplary embodiments set forth herein. Rather, these exemplary embodiments are provided so that this disclosure will be thorough and complete and will fully convey the scope to those skilled in the art. In the description, details of well-known features and techniques may be omitted to avoid unnecessarily obscuring the presented embodiments.

Embodiments relate generally to the field of computing, and more particularly to data processing. The following described exemplary embodiments provide a system, method and program product to, among other things, synthesizing speech at one or more speeds using speaking rate as a conditional input. Therefore, some embodiments have the capacity to improve the field of data processing by allowing for the use of deep neural networks to synthesize speech at different speeds without parallel data.

As previously described, speech synthesis methods rely on a phone duration prediction model for controlling the duration of each phoneme during speech generation. In such systems, the speed of generated speech is normally controlled by multiplying the predicted duration with a controlling factor to make it either faster or slower. However, the generated speech may become less natural as every phoneme is controlled with the same factor regardless of their phoneme identity and context. Additionally, without explicit duration-controlling, the speed of synthesized speech cannot be controlled in current end-to-end models. Existing speed controlling methods for speech synthesis may not generate natural speech as they may lack the understanding of how human controls the speed of their speech. It may be advantageous, therefore, to use machine learning and neural networks in a learnable speed controlling approach for speech synthesis for more natural speech generation. The approach for controlling the speed of generated speech described herein is completely learned from data and learns how human speech changes with changes in speed of speech. The speech generated with the described method, system, and computer program may be more robust, even if the training data contains speech with varying levels of speed due to additional speed normalization.

Aspects are described herein with reference to flowchart illustrations and/or block diagrams of methods, apparatus (systems), and computer readable media according to the various embodiments. It will be understood that each block of the flowchart illustrations and/or block diagrams, and combinations of blocks in the flowchart illustrations and/or block diagrams, can be implemented by computer readable program instructions.

The following described exemplary embodiments provide a system, method and program product that synthesizes speech at one or more speeds. According to the present embodiment, this unsupervised speech synthesis, which does not require any parallel data, may be achieved receiving speaking rate as a conditional input. Thus, the system may be able to divide the number of total phonemes by a total length of speech frames to synthesize speech at different speeds.

Referring now to FIG. 1, a functional block diagram of a networked computer environment illustrating a speech synthesis system 100 (hereinafter “system”) for improved synthesis of speech at one or more speeds is shown. It should be appreciated that FIG. 1 provides only an illustration of one implementation and does not imply any limitations with regard to the environments in which different embodiments may be implemented. Many modifications to the depicted environments may be made based on design and implementation requirements.

The system 100 may include a computer 102 and a server computer 114. The computer 102 may communicate with the server computer 114 via a communication network 110 (hereinafter “network”). The computer 102 may include a processor 104 and a software program 108 that is stored on a data storage device 106 and is enabled to interface with a user and communicate with the server computer 114. As will be discussed below with reference to FIG. 4 the computer 102 may include internal components 800A and external components 900A, respectively, and the server computer 114 may include internal components 800B and external components 900B, respectively. The computer 102 may be, for example, a mobile device, a telephone, a personal digital assistant, a netbook, a laptop computer, a tablet computer, a desktop computer, or any type of computing devices capable of running a program, accessing a network, and accessing a database.

The server computer 114 may also operate in a cloud computing service model, such as Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), or Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), as discussed below with respect to FIGS. 5 and 6. The server computer 114 may also be located in a cloud computing deployment model, such as a private cloud, community cloud, public cloud, or hybrid cloud.

The server computer 114, which may be used for synthesizing speech at one or more speeds is enabled to run a Speech Synthesis Program 116 (hereinafter “program”) that may interact with a database 112. The Speech Synthesis Program method is explained in more detail below with respect to FIG. 3. In one embodiment, the computer 102 may operate as an input device including a user interface while the program 116 may run primarily on server computer 114. In an alternative embodiment, the program 116 may run primarily on one or more computers 102 while the server computer 114 may be used for processing and storage of data used by the program 116. It should be noted that the program 116 may be a standalone program or may be integrated into a larger speech synthesis program.

It should be noted, however, that processing for the program 116 may, in some instances be shared amongst the computers 102 and the server computers 114 in any ratio. In another embodiment, the program 116 may operate on more than one computer, server computer, or some combination of computers and server computers, for example, a plurality of computers 102 communicating across the network 110 with a single server computer 114. In another embodiment, for example, the program 116 may operate on a plurality of server computers 114 communicating across the network 110 with a plurality of client computers. Alternatively, the program may operate on a network server communicating across the network with a server and a plurality of client computers.

The network 110 may include wired connections, wireless connections, fiber optic connections, or some combination thereof. In general, the network 110 can be any combination of connections and protocols that will support communications between the computer 102 and the server computer 114. The network 110 may include various types of networks, such as, for example, a local area network (LAN), a wide area network (WAN) such as the Internet, a telecommunication network such as the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN), a wireless network, a public switched network, a satellite network, a cellular network (e.g., a fifth generation (5G) network, a long-term evolution (LTE) network, a third generation (3G) network, a code division multiple access (CDMA) network, etc.), a public land mobile network (PLMN), a metropolitan area network (MAN), a private network, an ad hoc network, an intranet, a fiber optic-based network, or the like, and/or a combination of these or other types of networks.

The number and arrangement of devices and networks shown in FIG. 1 are provided as an example. In practice, there may be additional devices and/or networks, fewer devices and/or networks, different devices and/or networks, or differently arranged devices and/or networks than those shown in FIG. 1. Furthermore, two or more devices shown in FIG. 1 may be implemented within a single device, or a single device shown in FIG. 1 may be implemented as multiple, distributed devices. Additionally, or alternatively, a set of devices (e.g., one or more devices) of system 100 may perform one or more functions described as being performed by another set of devices of system 100.

Referring to FIG. 2, a block diagram 200 of the Speech Synthesis Program 116 of FIG. 1 is depicted. FIG. 2 may be described with the aid of the exemplary embodiments depicted in FIG. 1. The Speech Synthesis Program 116 may accordingly include, among other things, an encoder 202, an alignment module 204, and a decoder 206. According to one embodiment, the Speech Synthesis Program 116 may be located on the computer 102 (FIG. 1). According to an alternative embodiment, the Speech Synthesis Program 116 may be located on the server computer 114 (FIG. 1).

The encoder 202 may accordingly include an embedding module 208, a fully connected layer 210, and a CBHG (1-D convolution bank+highway network+bidirectional gated recurrent unit) module 212. The embedding module 208 may receive a phoneme sequence input via a data link 224 for both speech synthesis. The encoder 202 may output a sequence of hidden states containing a sequential representation associated with the input phonemes.

The alignment module 204 may include a fully connected layer 214, and a state expansion module 216. The state expansion module 216 may receive a phoneme rate input via a data link 226 and a root mean square error (RMSE) input via a data link 228. The alignment module 204 may be coupled to the encoder 202 by a data link 232. The alignment module may generate one or more frame-aligned hidden states that may be used as input for autoregressive generation. The output hidden sequence from the encoder 202 may be concatenated with embedded speaker information. The fully connected layer 214 may be used for dimension reduction. The output hidden states after dimension reduction may be expanded according to the speaking rate data of each phoneme received over the data link 226. The state expansion may be, for example, a replication of hidden states according to the received phoneme rate. The speaking rate of each phoneme may be obtained from force alignments performed on input phonemes and acoustic features. The frame aligned hidden states is then concatenated with frame level, RMSE, and relative position of every frame inside each phoneme. The input may, therefore, include phoneme sequence, phoneme rate, RMSE and a speaker's identity.

The decoder 206 may include a fully connected layers 218, a recursive neural networks 220, and a mel-spectrogram generation module 222. The fully connected layer 218 may receive a frame input via a data link 230. The decoder 206 may be coupled to the alignment module 204 by a data link 234. The recursive neural network 220 may be composed of two autoregressive RNN layers. An attention value may be computed from a small number of encoded hidden states that may be aligned with the target frames, which may reduce artifacts that may observed in the end-to-end system. According to one embodiment, two frames per time step may be decoded. However, it may be appreciated that any number of frames per time step may be decoded based on available computing power. The output from each recursion of the recursive neural network 220 may be passed through a mel-spectrogram generation module 222 that may, among other things, perform a post-CBHG technique to improve the quality of a predicted mel-spectrogram. The decoder may be trained to reconstruct a mel-spectrogram. In the training stage, embedded data correspond to speech samples of one or more speakers may be optimized jointly. The decoder 206 may be trained to minimize a prediction loss value associated with the mel-spectrogram before and after the post-CBHG step. After the model is trained, it may be used to synthesize speech at different speeds based on the original speaker's speech rate. The generated mel-spectrogram from the model after conversion may be used as a model for waveform generation for the synthesized voice.

Referring now to FIG. 3, an operational flowchart 400 illustrating the steps carried out by a program that synthesizes speech at one or more speeds is depicted. FIG. 3 may be described with the aid of FIGS. 1 and 2. As previously described, the Speech Synthesis Program 116 (FIG. 1) may quickly and effectively synthesizes speech at one or more speeds using speaking rate as an input.

At 302, a context associated with one or more phonemes and corresponding to a speaking voice is encoded by a computer. The output of the encoder may be a sequence of hidden states containing a sequential representation of the input phonemes. In operation, the encoder 202 (FIG. 2) may receive phoneme sequence data via the data link 224 (FIG. 2) and may pass the data through the embedding module 208 (FIG. 2), the fully connected layer 210 (FIG. 2), and the CBHG module 212 (FIG. 2).

At 304, the one or more phonemes are aligned to one or more target acoustic frames based on the encoded context. The alignment module may generate frame-aligned hidden states that will be used as input for autoregressive generation. This may ensure, among other things, that source phonemes may match their intended target phonemes. In operation, the alignment module 204 (FIG. 2) may receive phoneme data from the encode 202 (FIG. 2) over the data link 232 (FIG. 2). The fully connected layer 214 (FIG. 2) may reduce the dimensionality of the phoneme data. The state expansion module 216 (FIG. 2) may receive phoneme rate data and RMSE data over the data links 226 and 228 (FIG. 2), respectively, and may create a number of hidden states for processing the phoneme data.

At 306, one or more mel-spectrogram features are recursively generated from the aligned phonemes and the target acoustic frames. The generation of the mel-spectrogram features may include computing an attention context from one or more encoded hidden states aligned with the one or more target acoustic frames and applying a CBHG technique to the computed attention context. In operation, the decoder 206 (FIG. 2) may receive phoneme from the alignment module 204 (FIG. 2) through the data link 234 (FIG. 2). This data may be passed to the recursive neural network 220 (FIG. 2). Frame input data may be received by the fully connected layer 218 (FIG. 2) over the data link 230 (FIG. 2). The frame input data and the phoneme data may be recursively processed by the recursive neural network 220 and the fully connected layer 218. The result of each recursion may be passed to the mel-spectrogram generation module 222 (FIG. 2), which may aggregate the results of each recursion and perform a CBHG operation in order to generate a mel-spectrogram.

At 308, a voice sample corresponding the speaking voice is synthesized by the computer using the generated mel-spectrogram features. The speech synthesis method may not require parallel data for training and may include an autoregressive generation module which may generate a robust and natural-sounding speaking voice. In operation, the Speech Synthesis Program 116 (FIG. 1) would use the generated mel-spectrogram to synthesize a speaking voice at a given speed based on the phoneme rate of the speaking voice. The Speech Synthesis Program 116 may optionally transmit the synthesized voice to the computer 102 (FIG. 1) over the communication network 110 (FIG. 1).

It may be appreciated that FIG. 3 provides only an illustration of one implementation and does not imply any limitations with regard to how different embodiments may be implemented. Many modifications to the depicted environments may be made based on design and implementation requirements.

FIG. 4 is a block diagram 400 of internal and external components of computers depicted in FIG. 1 in accordance with an illustrative embodiment. It should be appreciated that FIG. 4 provides only an illustration of one implementation and does not imply any limitations with regard to the environments in which different embodiments may be implemented. Many modifications to the depicted environments may be made based on design and implementation requirements.

Computer 102 (FIG. 1) and server computer 114 (FIG. 1) may include respective sets of internal components 800A,B and external components 900A,B illustrated in FIG. 4. Each of the sets of internal components 800 include one or more processors 820, one or more computer-readable RAMs 822 and one or more computer-readable ROMs 824 on one or more buses 826, one or more operating systems 828, and one or more computer-readable tangible storage devices 830.

Processor 820 is implemented in hardware, firmware, or a combination of hardware and software. Processor 820 is a central processing unit (CPU), a graphics processing unit (GPU), an accelerated processing unit (APU), a microprocessor, a microcontroller, a digital signal processor (DSP), a field-programmable gate array (FPGA), an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC), or another type of processing component. In some implementations, processor 820 includes one or more processors capable of being programmed to perform a function. Bus 826 includes a component that permits communication among the internal components 800A,B.

The one or more operating systems 828, the software program 108 (FIG. 1) and the Speech Synthesis Program 116 (FIG. 1) on server computer 114 (FIG. 1) are stored on one or more of the respective computer-readable tangible storage devices 830 for execution by one or more of the respective processors 820 via one or more of the respective RAMs 822 (which typically include cache memory). In the embodiment illustrated in FIG. 4, each of the computer-readable tangible storage devices 830 is a magnetic disk storage device of an internal hard drive. Alternatively, each of the computer-readable tangible storage devices 830 is a semiconductor storage device such as ROM 824, EPROM, flash memory, an optical disk, a magneto-optic disk, a solid state disk, a compact disc (CD), a digital versatile disc (DVD), a floppy disk, a cartridge, a magnetic tape, and/or another type of non-transitory computer-readable tangible storage device that can store a computer program and digital information.

Each set of internal components 800A,B also includes a R/W drive or interface 832 to read from and write to one or more portable computer-readable tangible storage devices 936 such as a CD-ROM, DVD, memory stick, magnetic tape, magnetic disk, optical disk or semiconductor storage device. A software program, such as the software program 108 (FIG. 1) and the Speech Synthesis Program 116 (FIG. 1) can be stored on one or more of the respective portable computer-readable tangible storage devices 936, read via the respective R/W drive or interface 832 and loaded into the respective hard drive 830.

Each set of internal components 800A,B also includes network adapters or interfaces 836 such as a TCP/IP adapter cards; wireless Wi-Fi interface cards; or 3G, 4G, or 5G wireless interface cards or other wired or wireless communication links. The software program 108 (FIG. 1) and the Speech Synthesis Program 116 (FIG. 1) on the server computer 114 (FIG. 1) can be downloaded to the computer 102 (FIG. 1) and server computer 114 from an external computer via a network (for example, the Internet, a local area network or other, wide area network) and respective network adapters or interfaces 836. From the network adapters or interfaces 836, the software program 108 and the Speech Synthesis Program 116 on the server computer 114 are loaded into the respective hard drive 830. The network may comprise copper wires, optical fibers, wireless transmission, routers, firewalls, switches, gateway computers and/or edge servers.

Each of the sets of external components 900A,B can include a computer display monitor 920, a keyboard 930, and a computer mouse 934. External components 900A,B can also include touch screens, virtual keyboards, touch pads, pointing devices, and other human interface devices. Each of the sets of internal components 800A,B also includes device drivers 840 to interface to computer display monitor 920, keyboard 930 and computer mouse 934. The device drivers 840, R/W drive or interface 832 and network adapter or interface 836 comprise hardware and software (stored in storage device 830 and/or ROM 824).

It is understood in advance that although this disclosure includes a detailed description on cloud computing, implementation of the teachings recited herein are not limited to a cloud computing environment. Rather, some embodiments are capable of being implemented in conjunction with any other type of computing environment now known or later developed.

Cloud computing is a model of service delivery for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g. networks, network bandwidth, servers, processing, memory, storage, applications, virtual machines, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or interaction with a provider of the service. This cloud model may include at least five characteristics, at least three service models, and at least four deployment models.

Characteristics are as follows:

On-demand self-service: a cloud consumer can unilaterally provision computing capabilities, such as server time and network storage, as needed automatically without requiring human interaction with the service's provider.

Broad network access: capabilities are available over a network and accessed through standard mechanisms that promote use by heterogeneous thin or thick client platforms (e.g., mobile phones, laptops, and PDAs).

Resource pooling: the provider's computing resources are pooled to serve multiple consumers using a multi-tenant model, with different physical and virtual resources dynamically assigned and reassigned according to demand. There is a sense of location independence in that the consumer generally has no control or knowledge over the exact location of the provided resources but may be able to specify location at a higher level of abstraction (e.g., country, state, or datacenter).

Rapid elasticity: capabilities can be rapidly and elastically provisioned, in some cases automatically, to quickly scale out and rapidly released to quickly scale in. To the consumer, the capabilities available for provisioning often appear to be unlimited and can be purchased in any quantity at any time.

Measured service: cloud systems automatically control and optimize resource use by leveraging a metering capability at some level of abstraction appropriate to the type of service (e.g., storage, processing, bandwidth, and active user accounts). Resource usage can be monitored, controlled, and reported providing transparency for both the provider and consumer of the utilized service.

Service Models are as follows:

Software as a Service (SaaS): the capability provided to the consumer is to use the provider's applications running on a cloud infrastructure. The applications are accessible from various client devices through a thin client interface such as a web browser (e.g., web-based e-mail). The consumer does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure including network, servers, operating systems, storage, or even individual application capabilities, with the possible exception of limited user-specific application configuration settings.

Platform as a Service (PaaS): the capability provided to the consumer is to deploy onto the cloud infrastructure consumer-created or acquired applications created using programming languages and tools supported by the provider. The consumer does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure including networks, servers, operating systems, or storage, but has control over the deployed applications and possibly application hosting environment configurations.

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): the capability provided to the consumer is to provision processing, storage, networks, and other fundamental computing resources where the consumer is able to deploy and run arbitrary software, which can include operating systems and applications. The consumer does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure but has control over operating systems, storage, deployed applications, and possibly limited control of select networking components (e.g., host firewalls).

Deployment Models are as follows:

Private cloud: the cloud infrastructure is operated solely for an organization. It may be managed by the organization or a third party and may exist on-premises or off-premises.

Community cloud: the cloud infrastructure is shared by several organizations and supports a specific community that has shared concerns (e.g., mission, security requirements, policy, and compliance considerations). It may be managed by the organizations or a third party and may exist on-premises or off-premises.

Public cloud: the cloud infrastructure is made available to the general public or a large industry group and is owned by an organization selling cloud services.

Hybrid cloud: the cloud infrastructure is a composition of two or more clouds (private, community, or public) that remain unique entities but are bound together by standardized or proprietary technology that enables data and application portability (e.g., cloud bursting for load-balancing between clouds).

A cloud computing environment is service oriented with a focus on statelessness, low coupling, modularity, and semantic interoperability. At the heart of cloud computing is an infrastructure comprising a network of interconnected nodes.

Referring to FIG. 5, illustrative cloud computing environment 500 is depicted. As shown, cloud computing environment 500 comprises one or more cloud computing nodes 10 with which local computing devices used by cloud consumers, such as, for example, personal digital assistant (PDA) or cellular telephone 54A, desktop computer 54B, laptop computer 54C, and/or automobile computer system 54N may communicate. Cloud computing nodes 10 may communicate with one another. They may be grouped (not shown) physically or virtually, in one or more networks, such as Private, Community, Public, or Hybrid clouds as described hereinabove, or a combination thereof. This allows cloud computing environment 500 to offer infrastructure, platforms and/or software as services for which a cloud consumer does not need to maintain resources on a local computing device. It is understood that the types of computing devices 54A-N shown in FIG. 5 are intended to be illustrative only and that cloud computing nodes 10 and cloud computing environment 500 can communicate with any type of computerized device over any type of network and/or network addressable connection (e.g., using a web browser).

Referring to FIG. 6, a set of functional abstraction layers 600 provided by cloud computing environment 500 (FIG. 5) is shown. It should be understood in advance that the components, layers, and functions shown in FIG. 6 are intended to be illustrative only and embodiments are not limited thereto. As depicted, the following layers and corresponding functions are provided:

Hardware and software layer 60 includes hardware and software components. Examples of hardware components include: mainframes 61; RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computer) architecture based servers 62; servers 63; blade servers 64; storage devices 65; and networks and networking components 66. In some embodiments, software components include network application server software 67 and database software 68.

Virtualization layer 70 provides an abstraction layer from which the following examples of virtual entities may be provided: virtual servers 71; virtual storage 72; virtual networks 73, including virtual private networks; virtual applications and operating systems 74; and virtual clients 75.

In one example, management layer 80 may provide the functions described below. Resource provisioning 81 provides dynamic procurement of computing resources and other resources that are utilized to perform tasks within the cloud computing environment. Metering and Pricing 82 provide cost tracking as resources are utilized within the cloud computing environment, and billing or invoicing for consumption of these resources. In one example, these resources may comprise application software licenses. Security provides identity verification for cloud consumers and tasks, as well as protection for data and other resources. User portal 83 provides access to the cloud computing environment for consumers and system administrators. Service level management 84 provides cloud computing resource allocation and management such that required service levels are met. Service Level Agreement (SLA) planning and fulfillment 85 provide pre-arrangement for, and procurement of, cloud computing resources for which a future requirement is anticipated in accordance with an SLA.

Workloads layer 90 provides examples of functionality for which the cloud computing environment may be utilized. Examples of workloads and functions which may be provided from this layer include: mapping and navigation 91; software development and lifecycle management 92; virtual classroom education delivery 93; data analytics processing 94; transaction processing 95; and Speech Synthesis 96. Speech Synthesis 96 may synthesize speech at one or more speeds using speaking rate as a conditional input.

Some embodiments may relate to a system, a method, and/or a computer readable medium at any possible technical detail level of integration. The computer readable medium may include a computer-readable non-transitory storage medium (or media) having computer readable program instructions thereon for causing a processor to carry out operations.

The computer readable storage medium can be a tangible device that can retain and store instructions for use by an instruction execution device. The computer readable storage medium may be, for example, but is not limited to, an electronic storage device, a magnetic storage device, an optical storage device, an electromagnetic storage device, a semiconductor storage device, or any suitable combination of the foregoing. A non-exhaustive list of more specific examples of the computer readable storage medium includes the following: a portable computer diskette, a hard disk, a random access memory (RAM), a read-only memory (ROM), an erasable programmable read-only memory (EPROM or Flash memory), a static random access memory (SRAM), a portable compact disc read-only memory (CD-ROM), a digital versatile disk (DVD), a memory stick, a floppy disk, a mechanically encoded device such as punch-cards or raised structures in a groove having instructions recorded thereon, and any suitable combination of the foregoing. A computer readable storage medium, as used herein, is not to be construed as being transitory signals per se, such as radio waves or other freely propagating electromagnetic waves, electromagnetic waves propagating through a waveguide or other transmission media (e.g., light pulses passing through a fiber-optic cable), or electrical signals transmitted through a wire.

Computer readable program instructions described herein can be downloaded to respective computing/processing devices from a computer readable storage medium or to an external computer or external storage device via a network, for example, the Internet, a local area network, a wide area network and/or a wireless network. The network may comprise copper transmission cables, optical transmission fibers, wireless transmission, routers, firewalls, switches, gateway computers and/or edge servers. A network adapter card or network interface in each computing/processing device receives computer readable program instructions from the network and forwards the computer readable program instructions for storage in a computer readable storage medium within the respective computing/processing device.

Computer readable program code/instructions for carrying out operations may be assembler instructions, instruction-set-architecture (ISA) instructions, machine instructions, machine dependent instructions, microcode, firmware instructions, state-setting data, configuration data for integrated circuitry, or either source code or object code written in any combination of one or more programming languages, including an object oriented programming language such as Smalltalk, C++, or the like, and procedural programming languages, such as the “C” programming language or similar programming languages. The computer readable program instructions may execute entirely on the user's computer, partly on the user's computer, as a stand-alone software package, partly on the user's computer and partly on a remote computer or entirely on the remote computer or server. In the latter scenario, the remote computer may be connected to the user's computer through any type of network, including a local area network (LAN) or a wide area network (WAN), or the connection may be made to an external computer (for example, through the Internet using an Internet Service Provider). In some embodiments, electronic circuitry including, for example, programmable logic circuitry, field-programmable gate arrays (FPGA), or programmable logic arrays (PLA) may execute the computer readable program instructions by utilizing state information of the computer readable program instructions to personalize the electronic circuitry, in order to perform aspects or operations.

These computer readable program instructions may be provided to a processor of a general purpose computer, special purpose computer, or other programmable data processing apparatus to produce a machine, such that the instructions, which execute via the processor of the computer or other programmable data processing apparatus, create means for implementing the functions/acts specified in the flowchart and/or block diagram block or blocks. These computer readable program instructions may also be stored in a computer readable storage medium that can direct a computer, a programmable data processing apparatus, and/or other devices to function in a particular manner, such that the computer readable storage medium having instructions stored therein comprises an article of manufacture including instructions which implement aspects of the function/act specified in the flowchart and/or block diagram block or blocks.

The computer readable program instructions may also be loaded onto a computer, other programmable data processing apparatus, or other device to cause a series of operational steps to be performed on the computer, other programmable apparatus or other device to produce a computer implemented process, such that the instructions which execute on the computer, other programmable apparatus, or other device implement the functions/acts specified in the flowchart and/or block diagram block or blocks.

The flowchart and block diagrams in the Figures illustrate the architecture, functionality, and operation of possible implementations of systems, methods, and computer readable media according to various embodiments. In this regard, each block in the flowchart or block diagrams may represent a module, segment, or portion of instructions, which comprises one or more executable instructions for implementing the specified logical function(s). The method, computer system, and computer readable medium may include additional blocks, fewer blocks, different blocks, or differently arranged blocks than those depicted in the Figures. In some alternative implementations, the functions noted in the blocks may occur out of the order noted in the Figures. For example, two blocks shown in succession may, in fact, be executed concurrently or substantially concurrently, or the blocks may sometimes be executed in the reverse order, depending upon the functionality involved. It will also be noted that each block of the block diagrams and/or flowchart illustration, and combinations of blocks in the block diagrams and/or flowchart illustration, can be implemented by special purpose hardware-based systems that perform the specified functions or acts or carry out combinations of special purpose hardware and computer instructions.

It will be apparent that systems and/or methods, described herein, may be implemented in different forms of hardware, firmware, or a combination of hardware and software. The actual specialized control hardware or software code used to implement these systems and/or methods is not limiting of the implementations. Thus, the operation and behavior of the systems and/or methods were described herein without reference to specific software code—it being understood that software and hardware may be designed to implement the systems and/or methods based on the description herein.

No element, act, or instruction used herein should be construed as critical or essential unless explicitly described as such. Also, as used herein, the articles “a” and “an” are intended to include one or more items, and may be used interchangeably with “one or more.” Furthermore, as used herein, the term “set” is intended to include one or more items (e.g., related items, unrelated items, a combination of related and unrelated items, etc.), and may be used interchangeably with “one or more.” Where only one item is intended, the term “one” or similar language is used. Also, as used herein, the terms “has,” “have,” “having,” or the like are intended to be open-ended terms. Further, the phrase “based on” is intended to mean “based, at least in part, on” unless explicitly stated otherwise.

The descriptions of the various aspects and embodiments have been presented for purposes of illustration, but are not intended to be exhaustive or limited to the embodiments disclosed. Even though combinations of features are recited in the claims and/or disclosed in the specification, these combinations are not intended to limit the disclosure of possible implementations. In fact, many of these features may be combined in ways not specifically recited in the claims and/or disclosed in the specification. Although each dependent claim listed below may directly depend on only one claim, the disclosure of possible implementations includes each dependent claim in combination with every other claim in the claim set. Many modifications and variations will be apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art without departing from the scope of the described embodiments. The terminology used herein was chosen to best explain the principles of the embodiments, the practical application or technical improvement over technologies found in the marketplace, or to enable others of ordinary skill in the art to understand the embodiments disclosed herein. 

What is claimed is:
 1. A method of synthesizing speech at one or more speeds, comprising: encoding, by a computer, a context associated with one or more phonemes corresponding to a speaking voice; aligning, by the computer, the one or more phonemes to one or more target acoustic frames based on the encoded context; recursively generating, by the computer, one or more mel-spectrogram features from the aligned phonemes and the target acoustic frames; and synthesizing, by the computer, a voice sample at a given speed corresponding to the speaking voice using the generated mel-spectrogram features wherein the encoding comprises: receiving a sequence of the one or more phonemes; and outputting a sequence of one or more hidden states containing a sequential representation associated with the received sequence of phonemes, and wherein the aligning the one or more phonemes to one or more target acoustic frames comprises: concatenating the output sequence of hidden states with information corresponding to the speaking voice; applying dimension reduction to the concatenated output sequence using a fully connected layer; expanding the dimension-reduced output sequence based on a rate associated with each phoneme; and aligning the expanded output sequence to the one or more target acoustic frames.
 2. The method of claim 1, further comprising concatenating one or more frame-aligned hidden states with a frame level, a root mean square error value, and a relative position associated with every frame.
 3. The method of claim 2, wherein the rate of each phoneme is obtained from a force alignment performed on one or more input phonemes and one or more acoustic features.
 4. The method of claim 1, wherein the generating the one or more mel-spectrogram features based on the aligned frames comprises: computing an attention context from one or more encoded hidden states aligned with the one or more target acoustic frames; and applying a CBHG technique to the computed attention context.
 5. The method of claim 4, wherein a loss value associated with the mel-spectrogram is minimized.
 6. The method of claim 1, wherein the generating the one or more mel-spectrogram features is performed by a recursive neural network.
 7. The method of claim 6, wherein the inputs to the recursive neural network comprise the sequence of the one or more phonemes, a rate associated with each of the one or more phonemes, a root mean square error value, and an identity associated with a speaker.
 8. The method of claim 1, wherein the voice sample is synthesized without parallel data and without changing content associated with the speaking voice.
 9. A computer system for synthesizing speech at one or more speeds, the computer system comprising: one or more computer-readable non-transitory storage media configured to store computer program code; and one or more computer processors configured to access said computer program code and operate as instructed by said computer program code, said computer program code including: encoding code configured to cause the one or more computer processors to encode a context associated with one or more phonemes corresponding to a speaking voice; aligning code configured to cause the one or more computer processors to align the one or more phonemes to one or more target acoustic frames based on the encoded context; generating code configured to cause the one or more computer processors to recursively generate one or more mel-spectrogram features from the aligned phonemes and the one or more target acoustic frames; and synthesizing code configured to cause the one or more computer processors to synthesize a voice sample at a given speed corresponding to the speaking voice using the generated mel-spectrogram features, wherein the encoding code comprises: code configured to cause the one or more computer processors to receive a sequence of the one or more phonemes; and outputting code configured to cause the one or more computer processors to output a sequence of one or more hidden states containing a sequential representation associated with the received sequence of phonemes, and wherein the aligning code comprises: concatenating code configured to cause the one or more computer processors to concatenate the output sequence of hidden states with information corresponding to the speaking voice; applying code configured to cause the one or more computer processors to apply dimension reduction to the concatenated output sequence using a fully connected layer; expanding code configured to cause the one or more computer processors to expand the dimension-reduced output sequence based on a rate associated with each phoneme; and second aligning code configured to cause the one or more computer processors to align the expanded output sequence to the one or more target acoustic frames.
 10. The computer system of claim 9, wherein the concatenating code configured to cause the one or more computer processors to concatenate one or more frame-aligned hidden states with a frame level, a root mean square error value, and a relative position associated with every frame.
 11. The computer system of claim 10, wherein the rate of each phoneme is obtained from a force alignment performed on one or more input phonemes and one or more acoustic features.
 12. The computer system of claim 9, wherein the generating code comprises: computing code configured to cause the one or more computer processors to compute an attention context from one or more encoded hidden states aligned with the one or more target acoustic frames; and applying code configured to cause the one or more computer processors to apply a CBHG technique to the computed attention context.
 13. The computer system of claim 9, wherein the generating the one or more mel-spectrogram features is performed by a recursive neural network.
 14. The computer system of claim 13, wherein the inputs to the recursive neural network comprise the sequence of the one or more phonemes, a rate associated with each of the one or more phonemes, a root mean square error value, and an identity associated with a speaker.
 15. The computer system of claim 9, wherein the voice sample is synthesized without parallel data and without changing content associated with the speaking voice.
 16. A non-transitory computer readable medium having stored thereon a computer program for synthesizing speech at one or more speeds, the computer program configured to cause one or more computer processors to: encode a context associated with one or more phonemes corresponding to a speaking voice; align the one or more phonemes to one or more target acoustic frames based on the encoded context; recursively generate one or more mel-spectrogram features from the aligned phonemes and the one or more target acoustic frames; and synthesize a voice sample at a given speed corresponding to the speaking voice using the generated mel-spectrogram features, wherein the computer program is further configured to cause the one or more computer processors to: receive a sequence of the one or more phonemes; output a sequence of one or more hidden states containing a sequential representation associated with the received sequence of phonemes; concatenate the output sequence of hidden states with information corresponding to the speaking voice; apply dimension reduction to the concatenated output sequence using a fully connected layer; expand the dimension-reduced output sequence based on a rate associated with each phoneme; and align the expanded output sequence to the one or more target acoustic frames. 